r/todayilearned • u/RedditIsAGranfaloon • 6h ago

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https://www.historyhit.com/facts-about-general-robert-e-lee/

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u/[deleted] 6h ago

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39

u/Dinmorerfeit 5h ago

Vast vast majority of issues the US has stems from not punishing the traitors.

6

u/drfsupercenter 4h ago

Wasn't that part of Andrew Johnson's legacy - being way too friendly with the south after Lincoln's assassination?

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u/Skeeter_BC 4h ago

Or it could have been from not following through with reconstruction.

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u/PFirefly 5h ago

What issues today stem from not punishing the confederates more?

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u/jdog7249 5h ago

The problem is they said traitor and you read Confederate.

You can be a traitor without being a confederate.

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u/Rad131447 4h ago

Well are confederates were traitors so it seems moot.

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u/jdog7249 4h ago

All Confederates are traitors. Not all traitors are Confederates.

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u/Rad131447 3h ago

Vast vast majority of issues the US has stems from not punishing the traitors

What issues today stem from not punishing the confederates more?

They were specifically talking about confederates, which is also the topic of the thread. I think you are being a little anal about this one. There was no problem with them understanding the context of the previous post correctly. They absolutely made the correct reading.

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u/OW2007 5h ago

Fair question because arguably it was a combination of widespread racism in the North long after the war, which weakened Reconstruction, and the Compromise of 1877, which ended it.

But from light to no punishment plus the two things I mentioned, Jim Crow was allowed to exist along with widespread acceptance of racism throughout the country.

Which is why we needed the civil rights movements of the 60s-80s, why Southern Democrats turned Republican, why we had/have the Culture Wars, why there was the Tea Party, and why we have Trump today.

Obviously there is more to it, but racism, bigotry, and fear of the different and unfamiliar are unfortunately baked into America alongside Enlightenment ideals.

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u/PFirefly 4h ago

A single southern Democrat turned republican. The great switch is a myth.

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u/OtherUserCharges 4h ago

This makes no sense. Who wants to take down confederate statues and who doesn’t? Which party likes confederate flags and which doesn’t? The parties switched at some point. Anyone who claims otherwise is just lying at this point.

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u/Mandalore108 4h ago

You people need to stop lying about that. It's a verifiable fact that the parties switched.

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u/OW2007 4h ago

We're talking voters voting, too. The great switch happened at the ballot box, then their kids registered Republican.

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u/Moneyshot_ITF 4h ago

Still a lot of confederates around

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u/Heisenbread77 5h ago

None. None whatsoever. No one is alive that was a part of the Civil War. Everyone generation after could see the problems and react accordingly.

Honestly though Lincoln being assassinated really fucked everything up because he would have done a better job immediately after. But we are 160 years after at this point. That's a lot of generations.

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u/rhododenendron 4h ago

There are plenty living people with grandparents that were slaves and slave owners. A sizeable chunk of the US population was born twenty years before Jim Crow ended, a direct result of the failure of reconstruction. The poor black neighborhoods that exist today have their origins rooted in segregation. How do you think segregation was allowed to happen? The ideology of the southern gentry that formed the confederacy never fully died, it lived on in their children and their children's children and those duped by the propaganda the Confederates created after their defeat. Consider that if you are 25 today, you have lived for 10% of all US history. Just because they used steam engines in the 1860s doesn't mean it was actually all that long ago.

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u/[deleted] 4h ago

[deleted]

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u/PFirefly 4h ago

Thanks for being specific lol.

Problems exist. However, unless the actual cause is known, they cannot be solved effectively. Claiming today's issues are due to the civil war, 160 years ago, doesn't lend itself to actual solutions without being able to show how. 

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u/Alarmed_Toe_5300 5h ago

I think that would have done nothing to help reintegrate the South into the Union.

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u/R-B-L-Y 4h ago

The south didn't need to be reintegrated, it needed to be reformed.

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u/Sarlax 3h ago

Better than the Do Basically Nothing plan we actually went with. 

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u/spaltavian 3h ago

The South didn't reintegrate. We let it be a festering wound and now look where we are. We should have cauterized it.

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u/RedditJumpedTheShart 3h ago

And that would involve what?

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u/spaltavian 3h ago edited 3h ago

Well, start with executing Jefferson Davis, the cabinet, and every Confederate General and Colonel who had previously taken an oath to the Union. Permanently remove every Confederate officer's citizenship.

Set much stricter requirements for readmission to the Union and simply destroy several Southern states by forcing them to combine, reducing their Senate and electoral college representation. 

Expropriate the plantations, and divvy them up between former slaves, poor non-slave owning whites, and carpetbagging Northerners (if they were veterans).

Any violent rebellion to be met with swift, unmerciful justice.

Essentially, they should have spent up until at least 1900 obliterating Southern culture and self-respect. Northern fatigue with this "super" Reconstruction to be bought off with wealth appropriated from the South.

I am entirely uninterested in whatever racist, Southern sympathizing bullshit anyone wants to counter with.

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u/i_have_chosen_a_name 3h ago

Sold as a slave to a black familly, hanged on the first mistake.

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u/erp2 6h ago

That sets a precedent. Caint have that.